ROBIN GOODFELLOW
His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests
Robin Good-fellow is also known as the Hob-Goblin, Puck. The Welsh called him Pwca, which is pronounced the same as his Irish incarnation Phouka, Pooka or Puca. Indeed, Pouk was a typical medieval term for the Devil. For example, Langland once called Hell "Pouk's Pinfold" and the Phouka was sometimes pictured as a frightening creature with the head of an ass. It is believed that part of this volume may have written by Shakespeare's drinking buddy, the great Jacobean (in the reign of James I, the king after Elizabeth I) playwright Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson certainly knew his tricksters; the Puck-Hairy or Robin-Goodfellow is a character in his unfinished Robin Hood play, The Sad Shepherd.
As a shape-shifter, Puck has had many appearances over the years. He's been in the form of animals, like how the Phouka can become a horse, eagle or ass. He's been a rough, hairy creature in many versions. One Irish story has him as an old man. He's been pictured like a brownie or a hobbit. In a 1785 painting by William Blake, he looks like Pan from Greek mythology. In a 1841 painting by Richard Dadd, Puck looks like an innocent child.
This edition of The Mad Pranks & Merry Jests of Robin Good-fellow, commonly called The Hob-Goblin is a corrected edition of the 1628 London edition.
Edition & Binding:
ISBN: 1-879000-19-9
5.5 x 8.5 inches, x, 44 pages, illustrated.
Limited to 250 hand-numbered copies.
Hand-sewn and bound in mahogany brown kidskin "yapp-style" leather binding reminiscent of the bindings of hymnals with goldstamping on both the spine and front cover. Book is bound with black & brown silk headbands. Endsheets are French handmade brown & burgundy, sewn-in.
Robin Goodfellow has been typeset with a development version of the Doves Press type, designed by Emery Walker and originally punch-cut by Edward Prince. The work of the Doves Press ended in 1916, when Cobden-Sanderson prevented further use of the type by throwing it into the Thames River.
We are honored to be amongst the first in the United States to be granted the ability to publish a work with the digital revival of the Doves Press type.